Distinguishable
by Malvolia
Summary: Fitz has always wanted to be seen as separate from Simmons, but separate has its own challenges. A series of one-shots. Spoilers through episode 1x07 (The Hub), and missing moment prequel to 1x08 (The Well).
1. Distinguishable

**Set just after episode 1x07, "The Hub."**

* * *

Lately, Fitz spent a lot of time in his bunk thinking about Simmons. And not in the way it would have sounded if he'd said that out loud to somebody—Skye, for instance. Especially because he'd been thinking of Skye more in the way it would have sounded. For the first several weeks, anyway. Sleeping so close to her he could have heard her breathing if the wall hadn't been there. Skye with her devil-may-care attitude and her dark side good looks and her way with hacking into highly secured mainframes.

But not lately.

Lately, when his head hit the pillow, he was thinking of somebody a few pods further down the plane. Somebody he'd previously been rather glad to get a bit of a breather from, after spending virtually every minute with her for a whole day.

It wasn't that he'd ever disliked Simmons. They'd clicked from the moment they'd met, at a science fiction symposium in university, back when S.H.I.E.L.D. was a dream on the distant horizon. She'd taken the seat next to him in the last seminar of the day, on real-life potential applications of bio-neural circuitry, and they'd spent so long after it ended talking about whether or not it was a feasible technology that the hall was closing and they'd had to take their discussion to the nearest pub, which they also closed down. (Simmons, he remembered, only finished half a beer in four hours.)

Funny, he'd been the one to talk her into S.H.I.E.L.D. "Getting three Ph.D.s is like going to a carnival and only riding the rollercoaster," he'd said. "Getting a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge would be an entirely different ride."

Of course, he'd only had eyes for Sci Ops. It was Simmons who'd wanted adventure.

Well, they'd certainly had that.

Fitz rolled to his side and curled into a fetal position, hugging the blanket to his chest and frowning into the darkness.

He had never really thought much about why he took the assignment on the Bus, or for that matter why Simmons had turned down the acceptance to her third Ph.D. program. They'd been Fitzsimmons since university, mostly because people who met them couldn't remember which of them was which. No matter how much he'd tried to distinguish himself, set himself apart as an individual with his own name, someone who worked with but was not otherwise attached to her, it hadn't made any difference. It couldn't, not when they spent nearly every waking moment beside each other, collaborating and bickering and finishing each other's sentences. For better or for worse, they were a team. They were like twins. They were…they just _were_.

Until a week ago.

When it looked like they would be closing down one more in a long line of places, except this time he'd be leaving alone.

This wasn't the first night he'd had trouble falling asleep since then. It wasn't just that he kept reliving those awful two hours—the fog across his brain when Coulson told him Simmons was infected; the cold glass of the lab door that separated the two of them; the relief when the third rat didn't die instantly, turned to despair when the flash came and it floated; the tearing in his throat as he screamed her name before she jumped out of the plane; the unyielding metal of the deck plates beneath his hands and knees as he watched her plummet to the ocean, watched Ward catch her in the nick of time.

He was a scientist. He didn't bother much with trying to fix mistakes that had already been fixed. He didn't obsess over the past. If he could convince himself that it _was _all in the past, he would be sleeping, instead of wondering why earlier in the evening he'd lied to his partner about something as little as a sandwich.

The trouble was, he knew now what fieldwork really meant. It was an adventure, yeah, but a dangerous one. This wasn't Sci Ops, several layers behind the scenes—and behind walls of secondary adamantium. This was alien viruses and no extraction plans and missions apart without anybody else around to speak their language. Anything could happen.

The old Fitz, the Fitz who didn't know what fieldwork really was, would've told Simmons. When she asked how the sandwich was, he would've said that Agent Ward wouldn't let him have it; that even if dogs scenting them out might have been a valid concern, Ward could at least have let him take one bite before tossing it out for the rodents. Old Fitz probably wouldn't have realized Simmons would've castigated herself for putting him in danger, lain awake at night staring at the ceiling even though everything had turned out all right.

All the new Fitz could think, standing there across from her again, him not blown up and her not smashed to pieces, was: "Thank God, thank God, thank God." So he said the sandwich was delicious. (Her sandwiches always were.)

The old Fitz would've babbled easily as they took the crate into the lab, but the new Fitz wasn't yet used to having to swap notes on different halves of the mission.

Speaking of which, while he'd been off playing commando with Ward, she'd used a stun gun on a superior officer. So there was a new Simmons, too, and she could take care of herself.

New Simmons. New Fitz. Distinguishable at last.

He sighed and rolled to his back.

It was going to be another long night.


	2. The Call

**Set shortly before episode 1x07, "The Well."**

* * *

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

Fitz looked up from his computer screen. "Jemma. Your phone."

"Oh!" She reached into her pocket, fumbled for her mobile, almost dropped it, and then... "Oh, _no_. I missed it. I can't believe I didn't hear it!"

Her partner eyed her dubiously. "Yeah, no, neither can I."

"You know me," she rattled on, "I get so caught up in all the science I'm dead to the world."

He winced a bit at "dead," and she couldn't help but mirror the gesture. She bit the inside of her lip to keep more words from flowing out. Skye was right, she was horrible at lying.

"Are you avoiding them?"

"Or him. Or her. Who knows who it was?" _Shut up._

He rolled his eyes, not falling for it for a second. He knew full well that the only people who called her were her parents—usually her father, because her mother hated phones.

"I don't really know what to say," she admitted. "'Fine, thanks, how are you' seems a bit...inadequate."

The frozen look she'd been seeing for the past few weeks came over his face, and she realized that she'd been bad at having this conversation all around.

"You know how worried they were when I told them about this assignment."

That had been the first truly awkward conversation she'd ever had with her parents. She had thought that inviting them to her place for a nice dinner would help ease the blow of telling them she was going into the field, but of course with them living an ocean away she had had to improvise, setting up a few computer monitors for a long-distance chat. Fitz had been there, for moral support and because Fitz was almost always over for dinner, anyway. In retrospect, she understood why their mutually nervous looks had given her parents the impression that the evening was going in a different direction (which is why when Fitz told _his_ family later, Simmons had stayed out of the picture). But after they had been convinced that there were no diamonds involved in what their daughter was trying to tell them, they did get quite worried.

"Well, worried and disappointed," said Fitz, with an attempt at a grin.

"Not for long, you're still..."

"...like family, so do you want me to call them myself, then?"

"No!" Her hands flew out towards him as though he had his own mobile at the ready.

He shifted in his chair and squared his shoulders. "Practice on me."

She took a deep breath.

"Go on, then." He dropped his voice half an octave. "Jemma, good to hear from you. How are things on that flying circus?"

Up an octave and a half. "The Bus, they call it the Bus."

Back down. "I know what they call it. Stop interrupting, Jemma can't get a word in edgewise. Sorry about that, Jemma, you know your mom. How are you?"

Simmons giggled. Despite how much she hated his impression of her, Fitz's impressions of her parents were spot on. Still...

"I can't do this," she said. "Not while I'm looking at you."

He spun his chair around and faced the wall. "Jemma?" he asked, in his impression of her father. "Are you there? I think we have a bad connection."

Simmons stood for a moment, watching him wait.

"Jemma?"

It didn't sound like her father anymore. She took a deep breath and turned away from him.

"I'm here," she said. "I haven't...I haven't known what to say to you before now, so I didn't try to say anything. Now...now I still don't know what to say, but I'm saying it anyway."

Silence.

"I almost died. In the lab, of all places. There was an alien virus, but we almost didn't catch it in time. I'm okay...I'm healthy again. A little more afraid of heights than I used to be. Oh, I forgot, yes, I jumped out of the plane. But it was for a really good reason. The virus would have culminated in an EMP strong enough to short out every electronic device in the vicinity, and as the vicinity happened to be the plane, I would've taken everybody with me. That wasn't an option."

"So these new coworkers of yours let you jump out of the plane?" The voice was ragged around the edges. "Where was Fitz? I thought he said he'd look after you."

"I recall saying I'd..."

"...look after him. Same difference, same question."

She tightened her hands into fists, to keep them from trembling. "He tried to stop me. He was trying to tell me the antiserum worked, but I thought he was being quixotic. He..."

"...watched you jump."

"...saved my life. After I jumped. He got the serum and a parachute ready for Agent Ward. I would've died before I hit the water otherwise."

"Don't do it again, yeah?"

Simmons looked around. "I can't promise that, anymore than you can tell me you wouldn't have done the exact same thing, Fitz."

He swiveled slowly in the chair until he faced her. Somehow he looked ten years younger and decades older at the same time. "I want us to have that perfect opportunity to see the world," he said. "I want us both to have that."

"So do I."

"Then lie to me, all right? Tell me it'll always turn out fantastic and that there will always be somebody there to have your back, even if that person isn't me."

"There will be," she said. "And it isn't a lie."

He nodded. "Yeah," he said. The faraway expression on his face turned to a faint smile. "Yeah, they do, don't they?"

"_Both_ our backs," she reassured, because she didn't want him going anywhere she couldn't follow, either. "And we have theirs, too—don't forget your mission with Agent Ward."

Fitz held her eyes for a moment, and his smile broadened as he nodded agreement with her. He slapped his knees and stood up. "Anymore aoli left? Feels like time for lunch."

"Absolutely."

He nudged her shoulder as they headed for the kitchen. "Talk to your parents."

"I will," she said.

_Soon._


	3. Seeing the Future

**Set about halfway through episode 1x10, "The Bridge."**

* * *

After Mike Peterson had shrugged back into his shirt with a little more help than strictly necessary from Simmons and some irritated tongue-clicking from Fitz, their visitor excused himself to go find Coulson, leaving the two scientists alone in the lab.

Simmons shook her head at her partner. "Vegas, Fitz? Still, of all the things to do if you could see the future, Vegas?"

He frowned. "Oh, I get it. You 'still' don't see the big picture."

"It's Vegas. There _is_ no big picture."

"Well, uh, yeah, there is, actually, because I'd be pulling in thousands at the roulette tables alone."

"_Roulette_? You can't be serious."

"I'm completely serious."

Simmons sighed, disappointed. "Oh, Fitz."

"I don't remember you having a better idea."

"Because I was always in shock that you were so sure Vegas couldn't be bettered, I didn't have any ideas whatsoever about it in the past, but I've given it some thought since the last time this harebrained notion came up, and yes, now I do have a better idea. If I could see the future, I would warn people of impending global disasters. Tsunamis, earthquakes, terrorist attacks..."

Fitz made a time-out gesture. "But you can't, though."

"What do you mean, I..."

"Whatever happened, happened."

"That's a quote from _LOST _that doesn't even apply in this case, because it _hasn't _happened, that's the point, and anyway your scenario smacks much more of science fiction rule-breaking, Mr. _Grays Sports Almanac_."

"Hey," Fitz argued, "that was a bloody brilliant idea, and I'm sure Marty McFly would've cut Doc Brown in on a share of the profits. Had the latter been forward-thinking enough, imagine the scientific research that could have been funded."

Simmons snorted. "Or the casinos that could have been built if the almanac fell into the wrong hands, eh? The husbands slaughtered, the breast augmentations performed?"

"Hang on a second, my mind is thoroughly on research possibilities, here—and, by the way, speaking of research possibilities, even without Vegas we do have tech, you know. State-of-the-art gadgets so you don't have to put your hands all over everybody in the lab."

"So I can't dissect dead things _or_ touch living things? Just what sort of a biochemist am I allowed to be?"

"It's not..."

She darted her hands out and danced her fingers across his face. "Watch out, I'm touching living things, and who knows where my hands have been!"

Fitz sputtered and flailed her away. "Ach! Where _have _they been?"

"Nowhere worth mentioning, don't be such a baby..."

"A high percentage of illnesses are transmitted through contact with one of the orifices on the head, and this is something a biochemist should know..."

"...like an engineer should know that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to get good results..."

"...and I don't have time to be sick, and my measurements were perfectly fine without touching him..."

"…you're not going to be sick, and if you are you're not blaming it on me again, I didn't do it on purpose..."

"...like this?" Fitz asked, waving his hands towards her face. "This isn't a purposeful gesture?"

"Fine!" She spun away.

"Fine!" He exhaled sharply and rubbed his face with his sleeve, then returned his attention to mending Mike's suit. Several minutes passed in tense silence.

He couldn't see the future. So Vegas was a moot point, really. But... "Maybe we could use the Vegas winnings to build better disaster-warning systems."

"Shut up, Fitz," she said, but he heard the slight laugh in her admonishment and turned to grin at her.

As long as his future had his best friend in it, he supposed he was rich enough.


End file.
